Insurgency in the Maghreb

The Insurgency of the Maghreb (11 April 2002-) is a phenomenon of Islamist militant and terrorist activity in the Maghreb and Sahel regions of North Africa, beginning after the end of the Algerian Civil War in 2002. When the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) allied with al-Qaeda, the two forces created a determined North African Islamist organization that was capable of carrying out terrorist attacks across the Maghreb region. The insurgency spread from Algeria to neighboring countries, and the United States and United Kingdom began an intervention in the region in 2007 as a part of the "Global War on Terror". The GSPC and al-Qaeda merged in 2007 to create the new "al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb" terrorist group, which was based in the Algerian desert. The Arab Spring in 2011 paved the way for a wave of Islamist uprisings in North Africa, with IS taking over new territories in Libya and Tunisia as Ansar Dine and other al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups took advantage of the Malian Civil War to conquer Azawad. The French Air Force bombed Islamist forces in Operation Serval in 2013, assisting the Malian army in recapturing vast portions of northern Mali, and Tunisian armed forces carried out a series of offensive operations against Islamists in the Jebel ech Chaambi mountains after December 2012. From 2002 to 2006, 3,502+ people had been killed in Algeria; from 2012 to 2014, 1,689+ people were killed in Mali; in 2016 alone, 2,440+ people were killed and 4,000+ were wounded in Libya.